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Utigur is the name used only by Procopius Caesariensis and his continuators Agathias and Menander to refer to the Bulgar-Huns of Onoguria on the Eurasian steppes north-east of the Black Sea and east the Don river in the 5th and 6th centuries.[1]
The ancestors of the Utigurs represented the eastern half of the Hun Empire, and were ruled by descendants of Attila through his son, Ernakh. In the mid 6th century some Utigur groups were conquered by the Eurasian Avars and became known as the Kutrigurs, while the remaining (eastern) portion retained the Utigur ethnicon. Later under Sandilch, the Utigurs allied with the Byzantine Empire against their Kutrigur relatives and the Avars.
In the early 600s AD, a Utigur Khan named Kubrat defeated the Avars and reunited the Utigurs and Kutrigurs into an empire called "Old Great Bulgaria". After Kubrat's death his empire was divided between his sons. Some Kutrigurs, led by Kubrat’s second son Kotrag, migrated to the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers and founded a Khanate known as Volga Bulgaria. The last of the Utigurs had settled in Pannonia (modern Syrmia) by April 677. The majority submitted to the Avar Kaghan, though some rebelled moving to Pelagonia under the leadership of Maurus (nicknamed Kuber meaning "rebel"), while the Utigur Khan Asparukh had led a portion of Bulgars into Moesia.
See also
References
- ^ Browning, Robert (2003). Justinian and Theodora. Gorgias Press LLC. ISBN 1593330537.
External links
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